EDUCATION FEVER AND THE EAST ASIAN FERTILITY PUZZLE

Fertility throughout East Asia has fallen rapidly over the last five decades and is now below the replacement rate of 2.1 in every country in the region. Using South Korea as a case study, we argue that East Asia's ultra-low fertility rates can be partially explained by the steadfast parental drive to have competitive and successful children. Parents throughout the region invest large amounts of time and money to ensure that their children are able to enter prestigious universities and obtain top jobs. Accordingly, childrearing has become so expensive that the average couple cannot afford to have more than just one or two children. The trend of high parental investment in child education, also known as ‘education fever’, exemplifies the notion of ‘quality over quantity’ and is an important contributing factor to understanding low-fertility in East Asia.     

Population replacement,social mobility and development in Italy in the twentieth century

Abstract

Many scholars have expressed alarm at the low fertility and sustained immigration that have characterized Italy in the last decade (1.3 children per woman and an increase of more than 200,000 immigrants per year). This article takes a different approach, showing how low fertility and strong migratory balances (involving migration both between Italian regions and from abroad) have enhanced the formation of human capital, facilitating family strategies of upward social mobility, the construction of a more balanced labor market, increases in income and a decline in the graying of the population. The combination of low fertility and sustained immigration, therefore, has been and still is a fundamental resource for development of the population and of Italian society, especially in central and northern Italy. The article also discusses modifications in family and immigration policies suggested by these findings.     

Korean unification: a solution to the challenges of an increasingly elderly population?

South Korea experienced below replacement fertility for the first time in 1983, which also marked the point from which fertility rates continued to decline over the next 20 years to reach a low of 1.2 in 2003. In spite of recent pronatalist policies, the fertility rate has remained near this level and has not increased appreciably. The reasons for sustained low fertility in South Korea are complex and solutions remain elusive. One option that has been suggested is reunification with North Korea, which could address the eventual decline in the population and mitigate the increasing proportion of the elderly. Although the conditions surrounding the German reunification experience were vastly different than what Korea will likely undergo, it is informative to look at Germany as a guide to the demographic parameters of reunification. Three projection models for 2015–2050 are presented; even the highest fertility models show that reunification will not be the answer to population restructuring already underway in South Korea as a result of sustained low fertility.     

Reconstruction of birth histories using children ever born and children surviving data from the 1900 and 1910 U.S. censuses

Abstract

This paper describes a method to reconstruct birth histories for women in the 1900 and 1910?U. S. census IPUMS samples. The method is an extension of an earlier method developed by Luther and Cho (1988 Luther, N. Y., and L. Cho. 1988. Reconstruction of birth histories from census and household survey data. Population Studies 42 (3):451–72. doi: 10.1080/0032472031000143586.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). The basic method relies on the number of children ever born, number of children surviving, number of children coresident in the household and age-specific fertility rates for the population to probabilistically assign an “age” to deceased and unmatched children. Modifications include the addition of an iterative Poisson regression model to fine-tune age-specific fertility inputs. The potential of birth histories for the study of the U.S. fertility transition is illustrated with a few examples.     

THE CAUSES OF THE ASIAN FERTILITY DECLINE

The Asian demographic transition is treated as one aspect of the global Industrial Revolution, which started in the West but now involves the whole world. In fact, the multiplication of per capita income in Asia in the second half of the twentieth century has been the world's fastest. With the rise in female education, urban living and non-agricultural employment, as well as the mortality decline that began early in the twentieth century and government family planning programmes, fertility fell nearly everywhere from the 1960s presaging below-replacement fertility levels. The continent's macro changes are outlined and micro studies of the causes of fertility decline and the delay or forgoing of marriage are drawn from India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Thailand and South Korea. It is concluded that marriages will be increasingly forgone or delayed and that most, perhaps all, ESCAP Asia will this century experience below-replacement fertility. The path followed is much more likely to resemble that of Mediterranean Europe than Northern Europe.     

Is gender inequality a barrier to realizing fertility intentions? Fertility aspirations and realizations in South Korea

Research highlights the emergence of national low fertility regimes and the importance of understanding how institutional gender inequity supports low fertility. In South Korea, where gender inequality is high and a national low fertility regime exists, many women express a desire for two children but bear one child. Does gender equity, particularly within the household, influence the realization of fertility desires within the context of institutional inequality? Using the Korean Longitudinal Survey of Women &; Families, in this paper, I test the effect of gender equity within the family on second births. Evaluating a subsample of married women with one child who desire a second child, I find that women’s gender role attitudes, husbands’ housework and women’s responsibility for children’s education influence the likelihood of realizing a second birth. Results highlight the importance of men’s household contributions and women’s educational responsibilities on the realization of fertility intentions within low fertility regimes.     

An elasticity analysis of the effectiveness of pronatalist measures in Taiwan

The total fertility rate (TFR) of Taiwan has remained below the replacement level 2.1 for past thirty years. Currently, 16 of its 22 counties and cities have TFRs below 1.3, with TFRs in middle and southern Taiwan even below 1. In the recent decade, various pronatalist policies have been adopted in Taiwan to cope with the low fertility issue. However, little is known about the effectiveness of these policies. In order to identify the group(s) of women that should be targeted to increase the TFR effectively, we have constructed a stochastic model to perform an elasticity analysis. The results show that changes in marriage rates among women aged 25–29 years would have the largest impact on the TFR, with an elasticity value of 0.32. This means that every 1 per cent increase in the marriage rate of women aged 25–29 may increase the TFR by about 0.32 per cent (i.e. an increase of about 2.6 children per 1000 women). The TFR is also very sensitive in responding to changes in the marriage rate and parity-1 fertility rate of 30–34-year-old women, with elasticities of 0.19 and 0.16 respectively. The divorce rate has a small but negative impact on the TFR. Also, the possible contribution of third- and higher-order births is insignificant. These findings suggest that policies aimed at increasing the marriage rate among women in their late twenties and early thirties, and supporting first births of women in their early thirties, are likely to raise Taiwan’s fertility rate effectively.     

人的空间行为与公共秩序管理

本文从人的空间行为入手,分析了人的行为特征与空间的对应关系,探讨了针对人的空间行为进行公共秩序管理的具体方法。     

A Tale of Two Cities: A Decomposition of Recent Fertility Changes in Shanghai and Hong Kong

In the past 20 years, Hong Kong and Shanghai's total fertility rates (TFR) have undergone drastic changes: first declining and then rebounding. We use a decomposition method to assess changes in the TFRs of these two cities during the period 1990–2010. During the period of decline from 1990 to 2000, the decrease in marital fertility rate (MFR) was the major cause behind Shanghai's TFR decline; the decrease in nuptiality and MFR were equally responsible for the decline in Hong Kong's TFR. During the 2000–2010 period, although the decline in nuptiality exerted downward pressure on TFR, both cities experienced an increase in TFR mainly due to an increase in the MFR. Analysis of the difference in TFR between the two cities in 2010/2011, also reveals that Hong Kong's marriage delay has a negative impact on fertility and it is the higher MFR that leads to a higher TFR than Shanghai's TFR. It also shows that a reduction of first- and second-order births is equally responsible for Shanghai's lower MFR. Despite the one-child policy in Shanghai, some couples continue to postpone their first births, while others have even chosen to be childfree (a preferred term to ‘childless’). The tempo distortion is diminishing more prominently in Hong Kong, while the decline in fertility aspiration adds much uncertainty to future fertility trends in Shanghai.     

FERTILITY-REDUCING DYNAMICS OF WOMEN'S SOCIAL STATUS AND EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT

Education, unlike most other determinants of social status, causes a significant delay in fertility timing and depresses fertility outcomes. It also operates as a self-reinforcing status-seeking spiral mechanism, with important consequences for aggregate fertility over time. Later-born cohorts of women, in order to maintain a given position in the education distribution compared to their same-age peers, must attain increasingly higher levels of education. This implies that the process of status-seeking is having increasingly strong effects in terms of reducing global fertility levels. This can be particularly important for Asian nations where schooling levels have risen rapidly in recent decades and there has been an increase in the ages at childbearing and a depression of fertility outcomes.     

On Neanderthal subsistence strategies and land use: A regional focus on the Rhone Valley area in southeastern France

This study of Middle Palaeolithic assemblages from the Rhone Valley, in the South-East of France, increases our understanding of Neanderthal subsistence strategies and modes of territorial organisation by comparing a wide corpus of human occupations in limited chronological and geographical frameworks. The Neanderthal occupation modes may be examined using sites located in a reduced area, linking medium-altitude territories (Massif Central and the Alpine foothills) to the Rhone corridor. Through the combined analysis of the occupation levels of ten sites, all dated to between Marine Isotopic Stage (MIS) 7 and the beginning of MIS 3, we identify three types of occupation durations: (1) type 1 as long-term residential camps, (2) type 2 as short-term regular hunting camps and (3) type 3 as brief stopover camps. We discuss this variability of habitat types according to various parameters: site age, technical behaviour, environmental conditions, and site localisation and occupation seasons. The aim is to discern the underlying motivations behind Neanderthal group mobility. One of the main features of the Rhone Valley area is the great homogeneity of behaviours reflected within the sequences. This homogeneity, linked to the variability of the site occupations, supports the hypothesis of Neanderthal groups anticipating their land use requirements, and furthermore suggests that another type of circulating model was used in this area.